Rethinking salad: How to eat happy

Oct 1, 2016

Rate this article and enter to winHappiness is…a salad? Before you count us out as weirdos with a concerning affection for kale, let us explain. What we eat can affect our moods for up to two days afterward, research shows.

Students who ate foods high in calories, saturated fat, and sodium reported feeling moody and blah in the aftermath, said Dr. Helen Hendy, a psychologist at Pennsylvania State University, in the journal Appetite (2012).

But students who ate fruits and vegetables felt happier until the following day, even after other influences had been ruled out, according to “Many Apples a Day Keep the Blues Away” (2013), a British study.

So go ahead and get your greens on with our Ultimate Easy Happy Salad. We’ll tell you what to do and why it works, and you’ll be a believer in no time.

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Kimiecik, J. (2011). Exploring the promise of eudaimonic well-being within the practice of health promotion: The “how” is as important as the “what.” Journal of Happiness Studies, 12(5), 769–792. doi:DOI 10.1007/s10902-010-9226-6

Joanna Carmona is communications coordinator at the National Patient Safety Foundation. Previously, she was an assistant editor at Student Health 101. She has also edited collegiate textbooks for Cengage Learning and creating language learning materials for the US Department of Defense, libraries, and other educational institutions. Her BA in Spanish is from the University of New Hampshire.